


Boundaries

by pirategirljack



Series: Weekly Fic Project 2017 [3]
Category: Lethal Weapon (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, First Kiss, weekly fic project 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-11
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-23 14:43:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9661895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pirategirljack/pseuds/pirategirljack
Summary: Riggs and Cahill have a moment...and then have to decide what to do about it.(ps: I wrote this, actually, before the break and I forgot that he gave up drinking recently until after I revised, so we'll just pretend everything's fine for the sake of my plot...)





	

They were all needed at the crime scene showdown, a rough kidnapping case that brought the whole team out, but now it was done and they were going home. Bailey and Cruz headed out for a nightcap, and Riggs didn't miss the almost-shy look Cruz shot his partner, but when they met Scorsese at the elevator and Bailey asked him to join them, he hid his disappointment well. They were an unexpected match, an Amazon like Bailey and a half-mouse, half-raptor like Cruz, but Riggs could see potential there. He had a deep and abiding soft spot for obvious mismatches that somehow worked out. 

Murtaugh left right after the boss man, saying something about Trish having some words to say about their latest adventure, and Riggs begged off getting a ride home from him. Rog would just use him as an excuse to stall, and Riggs wasn't stupid enough to get on Trish’s bad side, not after seeing her in court. 

Which left Riggs alone at his desk with only the night crew. He wasn't close with any of them--wasn't close with most of the day crew either, though closer than he’d expected he’d be with his carefully-cultivated cheerful bad attitude--and was contemplating bedding down in one of the random offices all over the place. One couch was pretty much as good as any other, and he hadn’t yet slept in that one down by the interrogation rooms…

“You still here?”

The Doc brought him out of his brooding. He looked up and she smiled at him and for a second he didn't know what to say. That hadn’t been a thing before her stalker was a thing. Riggs didn’t have much, but he always had words. “Ah, yeah. Wasn't ready to head out yet.” He shuffled some folders around. None of them were open. Some of them weren’t even his.

“Do you need a ride?”

“No thank you, ma’am--”

“I'm off the clock, Riggs, call me Maureen.”

“Maureen.” Nope, didn’t feel right. “Mo. Doc. No, thank you, I’ll just grab a ride with one of the guys…” Not one of the snakes would make eye contact. One actually laughed.

The Doc tilted her head at him. She was too good, she knew he was lying, but she didn't force the issue. She rarely did, even when he deserved it. She got him.

Maybe that's why he gave in.

“Yeah. Yeah, I'd like that, thank you. I warn you though, I'm not much of a conversationalist.”

“Since when? I don't think you've ever stopped talking outside of my office since I met you.”

That got a smile out of him, and he tried to smother it out of self preservation. “It's been a long day.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I'm just tired.” He didn’t mention that he was always tired because he rarely slept, because she knew that already. This was polite smalltalk; that’s how polite smalltalk went.

His truck had gotten the worst of a shootout a few days ago and was at the shop, and he missed the creaky, rattling mess the second he got into her nice clean new car. It made him feel grimy and out of place. Much the way her house did.

“Nice wheels.”

“Get me where I need to go.”

"Surfboard fit into this little thing?"

She smiled again. Shit. "Better than you'd think."

They were mostly quiet on the drive, him brooding again as he looked out the windows at the glittering LA night, and her letting him have his space, but when she pulled up at the little parking space above his cove, she got out of the car with him.

“Ah, that's sweet, but you really don't need to walk me to my door.”

“Show me where you live.”

He stretched out his arm and gestured at the trailer, the sand, the beach. “See?”

“No, for real. I believe Murtaugh called you a “sand hobo” one time…?”

That grudging smile again. He'd have to have a talk with his face. But he'd never really been one to tell a lady no, and company did sound better than another night alone. Maybe she'd have a beer and burn off a few of the night’s too-long hours.

“Sure, um. Just--just gimme a minute.”

He wasn't sure why he was nervous all of a sudden, but there it was, a weird wobbliness in his chest, and he didn't want her to see the whole of the mess he lived in whenever Trish hadn't been by to tidy up (usually when her and Rog were fighting, but he never mentioned that). He tossed empty bottles in the trash, stuffed his weed in a jar, pushed some junk off a chair and into a box, then pushed the box under the chair. Then he opened the door like receiving guests was a normal and regular part of his day and let his psychiatrist into his home.

Which, he tried to convince himself, wasn’t weird or awkward at all.

She looked around, and he wanted to regret letting her have this glimpse into his psyche, but try as he might, he couldn't do it. And he was usually real good at regret.

“Not as bad as Murtaugh made it sound.”

The tightness in his chest loosened a little. “Want a beer?”

“Sure.”

\--

Somehow, three hours later, they wound up dancing.

Well, she was dancing, and trying to show him the moves to some old ballroom thing that he just wasn't getting--partly because of the number of beers they'd put away, and partly because ruffling her feathers was fun. It wasn't something he could do most days, no matter what he threw at her, but she was off duty, and that apparently made her softer. Or maybe she was just playing along. 

But here they were in his tiny living room, the radio all crackling and poorly tuned to some old people channel, her hand on his shoulder, his hand on her hip...and then she looked up at him and they were caught. 

Something flared between them and made the air tight and strange. He couldn't breathe. He didn't want to.

But, surprisingly, he wasn't afraid.

He reached up and touched her cheek--and she stood on her tiptoes to press her lips to his.

For a second, he froze. He didn't have a plan for this, hadn't prepared armor against it. And now that it was happening, he found he didn't want to. He kissed her back.

He hadn't kissed anyone he could remember clearly or knew the name of in a long time, but it didn't feel strange or illicit, it felt...right. So he deepened the kiss, pulled her closer, and she wound her arms around him. When he hiked her up onto his tiny counter to reach her better, she hooked her long legs around his, and for a second he teetered on the sharp edge of the point of no return--

And she pulled away, flushed and confused, her dark eyes huge.

“What're we doing?” She said, half breathless. Mortified. “I should go.”

“Doc--”

“No, Riggs--this is--this is wildly inappropriate, I never should have asked to come in. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to--I'm sorry.” And then she was gone.  
And that's when the guilt kicked in.

In a way, it was a relief. Guilt was something he could understand.

\--

In the morning, he came in in the same clothes he’d been wearing the night before, and he’d slept barely an hour, but he was too wound up to really feel the fatigue. He had an appointment for that afternoon, and he didn’t know how he could avoid it--which meant it was a relief when he got the memo saying she’d rescheduled because of something that sounded made up.

The relief wore off when it happened three more times, though, so he went to her office at the end of the day when he knew she’d be alone, sitting on the couch where he usually sat, finishing up the day’s paperwork.

She looked up when he opened the door, and there was a clear moment where she looked like maybe she’d be the one to jump off the balcony, and then she pulled herself together. “Riggs. I was going to call you.”

He lifted an eyebrow. As skeptically as he could, which was pretty skeptically.

She barreled on as if he hadn’t, or like she needed to say something or she’d chicken out. “I’m not sure I can be your psychiatrist anymore.”

“Doc, we’ve been through this. You’re the only shrink for me.” It was the wrong thing to say, too familiar, to close to what they were mutually avoiding. She bristled like a porcupine and squeezed her hands into fists, trying to maintain her control. He started to backpedal, but she talked right over him again.

“We can’t do--what we almost did. We can’t. I can lose my job--my licence. Everything. There’s lines between doctor and patient on purpose, I can’t do my job if we cross them--”

“Doc. It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay, Riggs.” And he knew that she had spend these days wrestling with the same memories, the same half-angry, half-longing, all inappropriate feelings.

“No. But it will be.” He lowered himself into what was normally her chair, and the switch in their positions felt strange, but this needed to get cleared up. The panicky flapping in his chest that had led him to manipulate her into taking him back as a patient was back, but he’d already played that card and if it had been unfair then, and it was, it’d be so much more unfair now. “Look. Cards on the table. I’ve been to a lot of shrinks since I came out of the military. A few before that, too. You’re the only one who has done me a damned bit of good, and whether it looks like it or not, I--I need you. In this room. Helping me.”

“Riggs…”

“Now, I’m not going to suddenly be an easy case. I’ll almost definitely continue to be wildly inappropriate at every opportunity. All of this is like pulling teeth, even for me, even just walking through that door every appointment, and I’ve always been at least 78% sonofabitch, even as a kid, but--Doc, you get me. You do. You make it make sense. All of it. And I need that more than I need to endanger your career. Promise.” He even crossed his heart like a kid. “‘Sides, I’ve got my hands full endangering my own career, and Rog’s, and probably Bailey and Cruz’s, eventually, maybe Avery’s on a good day…”

He trailed off all the way and left a few seconds of silence before she finally spoke. After taking a deep breath that he was sure would be another rebuff. He was building up a good stock of self-hate based on the thought _You’ve done it now, you asshole_ , when she sighed and he knew she wasn’t going to send him away. Not this time.

He didn’t want there to be other times, but he knew what had pushed them together in his trailer and he knew himself well enough to know that wouldn’t go away just because of rules. But maybe they’d bought a little time. A little time to pretend everything was fine. If they were lucky, maybe enough time to figure out how it could be.

“I’ve scheduled your next appointment for our usual time tomorrow. Don’t miss it.”

He wanted to kiss her, but that was part of the problem, so he didn’t. “Thanks, Doc,” he said instead, quietly, and hoped she knew all the other stuff he was thanking her for.

“Go home, Riggs. I’ll see you tomorrow.” But sounded borderline sad more than her usual forcefulness when he was being trouble. His natural contrariness wanted to stay and make a fuss about something, to distract her and himself and waste some of both of their time, but he decided that was going too far. So he got up and went back toward the door.

And like he did last time, he paused. But unlike last time, he turned back. And didn’t know what he’d meant to say. Maybe something that couldn’t be said. So he said “Tomorrow,” and only hesitated a second longer before he left.

But her office was made of glass, and he saw when she buried her face in her hands, and he decided to be on his best behavior for a while. If anything was going to happen between them, it would be because she said so. She was the one with more to lose, the one who wasn’t a walking disaster, and was obviously way out of his league. That stalker had been right about that. And if nothing happened, that would also be on her say-so. Because he did need these sessions, and he’d ruined too much of his own life to give up this one good thing that easily. He knew he didn’t deserve that sort of attention anyway.

But he brought a shiny red apple to place on the table between them when he went to his appointment the next day, and she smiled when he did.

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of my Weekly Fic Project! Make sure to click the link and see the other fics. If you'd like to request a story, leave me a note in the comments, and if it happens, I'll link you to it! (this goes for any fandom I write in, not just this one! look at my stuff to see what I write, if you like!)


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